F r a g m e n t s
by Beaslays
Summary: One-shot. The Bdamage knows none of them are whole, not like this. She also knows that Yamato will be left behind. Marda-B and the Bdamage's story, told in the struggles of Yamato and his friends. Implied Bdamage x Marda-B.


A/N: Whew, been a long time since I posted any B-daman fic. In any case, this one is an old, old idea of mine. I wondered if Marda-B had really fully revived Gray and company. Obviously they're fine and dandy in season two and it was never really touched upon in canon, but the idea stuck with me, and I've only managed to write it down now.

Somehow, along the way, I managed to work in Bdamage x Marda-B, while exploring backstory, and basically ignoring the manga's version of events.

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**Fragments**

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Marda-B was not a god.

_The uniform footsteps of mindless soldiers fills the room. Gray identifies them, and Terry voices the question on all their minds. Too late, they react when B-daman are revealed, too late, they move when the shots are fired. The world shakes around them, and then everything is falling, falling, and they're gone._

_Yamato screams. Marda-Biarce only laughs._

The Bdamage knows this. She knows Marda-B was not a god, had no true power beyond his own twisted learnings.

Learnings that had been stolen from actual gods. Marda-B, in his youth, had scoured and searched the world and the stars for all the secrets of the world, and he found them in his sleep. He found them, in her.

_Yamato is alone; his world, shattered. He fights and fights, matching each of his enemy's taunts with an attack, but it's futile. Useless. To the tainted eye of Marda-Biarce, his attacks are fueled with anger, with hate._

_To the sharpened eyes of the Bdamage, Yamato is filled not with anger, but with despair and loneliness._

She was not a god. She was an overseer assigned to this world, forbidden to interfere with mortal lives. She could only watch and chronicle, describe and reveal. Still, people worshipped her, so she hid secrets around the world for them to find. Pendants infused with bits of her power, B-daman parts blessed with her touch, sacred ruins that will never fall.

The young Marda-B found all of them, and eventually found the path to her. The Bdamage had greeted him with a smile.

He had offered her himself, offered her his entire being, in exchange for even more knowledge. The Bdamage, in her own youth, had accepted, and soon, soon he had found the gods, the true rulers of the world, and there before them, his hubris became his downfall and her crime.

_Five orbs of light flicker into existence, floating out of rubble and darkness. Yamato wakes from blinding light in a place of stars._

_The five wake, and Yamato is there, attacking Gray with the strongest of his hugs. They'll never know the reason behind his overwhelming joy, and he'll never talk about his despair, about those few minutes when he had been left behind._

_When they return, Marda-Biarce is waiting for them._

The second time the Bdamage met with Marda-B was within the Temple of Meowlantis. The stone gods surrounded them, watching her as she had passed their divine judgement on him - her atonement for both his and her crimes. She had torn him to pieces then, and as she did so, she whispered to him twisted versions of the promises he had made to her in their first meeting. She had torn his soul in two, and of these two, she fragmented them further, scattering them into the world below.

The gods, sated, had returned to their sleep.

Once they had gone, the Bdamage had taken what little she had kept of Marda-B's soul, and placed him in his own stone prison.

Afterwards she had watched, and as the years passed, and the things she had promised him came to be, he learned to control her people, to sway them to his will and use them as his puppets. He was like a disease, spreading his dark taint throughout her world, always, always, seeking a way to avenge himself, and to create, of course, that perfect battle he had always dreamed of.

In response, the Bdamage created Yamato, and left him with the lowest of Marda-B's kind.

Touching the world has always been an addiction, for an overseer like her.

_The spirit speaks to them, and they learn, and they fight. Yamato is at their core, and they are as much his as he is theirs._

_Marda-Biarce's scream will haunt their memories for as long as they live._

_The world below comes to life._

Marda-B was not a god.

He was not like the true gods who slumbered. He could not create life. The five he had saved, the five whose bodies he had recreated from ashes and light, had failed and crumbled, and thus they had left Yamato alone again.

She had been there to greet them, snatching their souls from the sea of nothingness, and shaping them in her realm. They were confused souls, looking around, looking at her, questioning her.

The Bdamage told them then, of whom they had left behind. She had seen the looks on their faces change, had noticed the despair that rushed through each of them, had felt the...the...

She had guessed as much.

So she had smiled at the five, and it was not long before they had accepted her proposed terms.

_Afterwards, when everything is done, when Marda-B is whole once more, the people whisper Yamato's name. The others follow, and they return, all whole, all safe._

_The world comes to meet them, to applaud them, and all should have been right in a world no longer fragmented._

Marda-B came to her soon after, and she refused him this time. He had changed, and here he was, to offer her not himself, but his sorrow, his guilt, his apology.

The Bdamage had known then that she, too, had been tainted by mortal minds, for in that moment, she had found that she could not forgive him.

Marda-B had sighed, sadness seeping into his golden eyes, and faded away once more.

_Her five young assistants are restless today, and Yamato's name is barely a whisper on their lips._

_Yes, it's time, thinks the Bdamage._

_A single orb of pure bright light comes to meet her, and soon, standing there in her realm, is Yamato._

_"Welcome home," she tells him, just as five pairs of feet scamper in, and five pairs of eyes lock gazes with his very being. She thinks she could freeze time at that moment and nothing would be different._

_And then they're with Yamato, holding him and gripping him, and the Bdamage knows, oh, how she knows._

_Yamato looks to her, and thanks her. She laughs, and smiles, and welcomes him to her realm._

The Bdamage knows they are all whole now. Whole, like Marda-B, when the battle had been won. Whole, like her, when she had hunted down Marda-B and had finally forgiven him. Whole, like the world below, turning quietly and living, living.

Whole, in their love for Yamato, and together with him, they had faded into the world beyond.

Whole, not fragmented.

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A/N: Reviews are appreciated. I wrote this fic for my attempt at the 500themes challenge on LJ. The prompt was 439. A soul divided. My other fics can be found on 500fics on tumblr. Also, a quick note, the formatting is really messed up here. /sighs

I also mostly post my fic to Archive of Our Own nowadays. Come post! The Battle B-daman tag on there needs populating :)


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